Monday, 2 July 2012

The Free Syrian Army's DIY Rocket Workshop

A rather unique video from Syria has been posted online that shows a weapons workshop operated by the Free of the North Battalion, who are based in the Aleppo and Idlib region

Bjørn H Jespersen who has his own great blog looking at Syria has been examining the video with me, and we've come to the following conclusions about the video. The workshop seems dedicated to making ammo for this six barreled launching device, which itself appears to be homemade

The men in the workshop appear to be working on different parts of the rocket. For example, this one is working on fuses for the ends of the rockets

This image shows the rockets at two different stages, on the left you see the rockets before what appears to be small stabiliser fins have been attached to the end of the rocket, which you can see on the right

It appears the thin tubes with holes punched in them might come from RPG rounds, an example of which you can see here

At around 1:50 in the video you see a sack of explosives, and later on a pile of what looks like completed rockets

That's around 21-22 finished rockets, with around 20 unfinished rockets shown in other parts of the video, and parts for a further 10 or so also shown. What's unclear is the propulsion system for the rockets, or any details of how effective they would be, but it does show that much like the Libyan rebels the FSA are turning to DIY weaponry to make up the shortfalls in their armaments.
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